“We’re about to do worse. Keep going straight!”
“But there’s a fence.” He pointed at the closed entrance gate, guarded by a couple of scarecrows.
“Do it! Just keep going straight!” I ordered. “Hold on!” I shouted to the others.
Gabriel and Daniel clung tight to Sirhan. Slade cringed, slammed on the gas, and the front of the limo hit a metal gate. I braced against the impact as the gate burst open and one of the garish scarecrows went flying up in the air. It landed with a thunk on top of the car. It’s eyeless face looked down on us through the moon-roof before it went flying off the car.
“Hay!” Slade shouted, and we plowed through a pyramid of hay bales. Hay exploded all around us, but we kept on sailing until we came to the center of the barnyard and I shouted for Slade to stop.
The limo swerved, sending mud and hay flying as we spun to a stop.
“You’re insane!” Slade yelled.
“You’re brilliant,” Daniel said, pushing open his door.
“Sirhan’s dying!” Gabriel screamed.
He and Daniel pulled Sirhan’s shriveled body from the back of the car. If I’d thought the ancient alpha looked old before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. Like leathered skin pulled tight over a skeleton.
Gabriel cradled Sirhan’s head in his lap as he lay in the hay in the middle of the barnyard. “Sirhan,” he said. Tears streamed from his eyes into his red beard. “Sirhan, I am here. I will keep my promise. I’ll cure you before you die.”
“Doesn’t he have to be in wolf form?” I asked, looking at Sirhan’s half-beast, half-human body.
“This is it,” Gabriel said. “There is no separation between his two forms anymore.”
“It’s now or never,” Daniel said, holding Sirhan’s limp wrist.
“Deal the final blow,” I said. “Let him die by the hand of the one who loves him most.”
With a great scream, Gabriel slammed his hand down on the hilt of the silver spear that protruded from Sirhan’s chest. It sank deep into his hollow rib cage, sending a gush of blood rolling into his already saturated fur. The body convulsed, but then with a final gasping wheeze, Sirhan’s head lulled back in Gabriel’s lap—dead.
We all knelt quietly in the mud, while Gabriel held Sirhan’s body and cried, until right in front of our very eyes Sirhan’s dead body began to transform. His short fur melted away, and his gray, withered wolf skin shifted into an olive human tone. The snout of his face shortened into a normal human nose, mouth, and dimpled chin. I couldn’t help thinking, as I looked at the purely human version of Sirhan in the light of the moon, that I now knew what Daniel would look like if he ever lived to be a very old man.
“It worked, my brother,” Gabriel whispered. “You are cured.”
“Um, how do you know if the cure worked?” Slade asked.
“The transformation,” Gabriel said. “Normally, when an Urbat dies, his body transforms into that of wolf. I always assumed it was a symbol that the man would remain a demon forever. But Sirhan’s body has reverted to his human form. I have to believe that means his soul is free of the wolf.”
“I think you’re right,” I said softly. “When I cured Daniel, his body turned human.”
Without a word, Daniel leaned over his grandfather’s body and crossed the old man’s arms over his chest like a mummy I once saw of an ancient king.
Gabriel rocked back and forth until he flung his head back, looking up at the moon, and a great howl ripped out of his throat. The sound of it made my whole body shudder.
Daniel stood, his head arched back as well, and picked up the cry. Slade followed suit. And soon more and more voices—dogs or wolves somewhere in the distance—joined in, creating an unearthly chorus, filling the early-morning sky with sorrow.
The Death Howl had begun.
It would spread, like a wave in a stadium, until every Urbat knew it was time.
Forty-four hours.
In about forty-four hours, the Challenging Ceremony would start in this exact spot.
Chapter Thirty-one